


Innocuous

by Clair de Lune (clair_de_lune)



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Incest, M/M, Pre-Series, Sharing a Bed, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clair_de_lune/pseuds/Clair%20de%20Lune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always starts with something seemingly innocuous. (Pre-series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innocuous

It always starts with something seemingly innocuous. Tonight, it was Lincoln towering over him by the couch and lightly slapping his shoulder to wish him good night.

What’s more innocuous than your brother wishing you good night after a boring evening watching whatever-it-was on TV?

He’s familiar with the symptoms. He’s experienced them for all his teenage and grown-up life, after all. His skin goose-bumps, icy-cold and burning-hot at the same time, and his breathing picks up. If he’s lucky, if the stimulus remains mild, it stops there, and it’s bad, sure, but not _too_ bad. It’s how it happens most of the time. Rest of the time, though... his blood starts running faster and hotter, small electrical sparks blaze in his lower back and stomach and eventually twists his guts, his whole body feeling lax yet oddly taught, skin feverish and too tight to contain him.

What he’s never learned is how to avoid said symptoms, let alone get rid of them. Just as he’s never managed to know what to do with the pleasant buzz and the less than pleasant nausea respectively caused by arousal, and shame and guilt for said arousal.

It doesn’t take much. A casual touch on his shoulder; a brotherly hug; Lincoln falling asleep on the couch next to him and mistaking him for a pillow; Lincoln borrowing a tee-shirt from him; an exasperated-affectionate look; a glimpse of his back as he gets out of the shower; _this_ scent of sweat after Vee and he... The range of situations is endless, even though it has mercifully diminished since Michael has been living alone.

But for a couple of days, he’s been crashing at his brother’s, and it has started again. With renewed fervor, like a revenge for having starved the monster for too long.

When Lincoln passes by him as he tries to find sleep on the couch, Michael is wrapped in the blankets. The damn apartment is stuffy in summer and cold in winter — and this is a typically Chicagoan winter — but this is not the reason why he grips the covers. He holds onto them so as not to do something stupid.

At the door of his bedroom, Lincoln calls out across the living room, “C’mere” and goes inside.

It’s not a suggestion.

Michael’s heart misses a beat or two. He closes his eyes, clutches the blanket tighter into his fists and pretends he didn’t hear Lincoln.

“Come on, Michael. It’s warmer in the bedroom.”

“‘m too old to share a bed with my brother,” he grumbles into his pillow, faking sleepiness.

“You’re also too young to freeze to death.”

So, it always starts with something seemingly innocuous, and it quickly sends him into a whirlpool of unwanted emotions, a maelstrom of inappropriate longing, a havoc of guilt. He’s sick; he has to be to feel that way, and that’s bad enough already. The only worse thing is the possibility of Lincoln ever finding out.

Although, given the circumstances, being unable to resist when Lincoln invites him to his bed — all brotherly and in good faith because Lincoln is just that, brotherly and _normal_ — is not stellar either.

Lincoln has already settled for the night and he’s lazily lifting up the covers on the right side of the mattress for Michael. From the threshold, his arms crossed on his chest against the cold as well as in a protective gesture, Michael blinks. This. This is his best dream and worst nightmare all at once, rolled into white cotton sheets, two layers of wool blankets and Lincoln’s strong body already warming the bedding.

“Come on, Princess Pea, some of us need our beauty sleep.”

“I don’t know what’s the more disturbing. The beauty sleep thing or the fact that you know Princess Pea.”

“I sleep with Princess Pea.” Then, imitating Veronica’s higher pitch of voice. “Lincoln, you hog the blankets. Lincoln, a spring just popped under my ass. Lincoln, you’re kneeing me in the back. Lincoln, your hands are cold.”

Michael laughs and settles in bed. Vee has a point about the springs, sure, but otherwise, the bed is warm and welcoming. It dips a bit in the middle, the cotton of the sheets is pleasantly thick and soft, and the pillows smell of cologne, leather and smoke; they smell of Lincoln. Michael breathes in once, only once, and pushes the sensation into the deepest corner of his brain and the furthest part of his guts.

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like unreasonable requests from her, you know.”

Lincoln evoking Vee stings so bad and feels so comforting at the same time. It stirs up a ridiculous jealousy, but also puts things back where they belong. Girlfriends share the bed and fuck; baby brothers share the bed and listen to tales about girlfriends.

Cautiously, Michael lies on his side at the edge of the mattress, facing away from Lincoln. He’s reckoning without Lincoln, who forcefully drags him towards him — ‘forcefully’ might be an exaggeration as Michael doesn’t need that much persuasion — tugs him down a bit and...

“Don’t...”

… and spoons him. Arms wrapped around him and tucking Michael’s head under his chin like when they were kids and Michael was cold or afraid or just _needed_ Lincoln.

“Don’t spoon me,” he finishes. “I hate that.”

“You liked it when you were seven.”

“Which was about fifteen years ago.”

He did like it; he loved it. It sends his mind reeling into another tide of late remorse, wondering if even back then, he loved it for the wrong reasons. Can you be seven and relish your brother’s embrace for the wrong reasons?

You certainly can when you’re twenty-two, and that’s a more urgent issue.

He closes his eyes and relaxes against Lincoln. It’s not as if he can do anything else.

He lied to Linc. He still loves it. He craves for it, which, obviously, he can’t admit to Lincoln. Maybe he should just enjoy it now, and stop thinking as it won’t change anything.

He pulls a pillow down and under the covers to tuck it against his stomach. He doesn’t need Lincoln’s hand wandering down there once his brother is asleep.

There are goose-bumps, hot-cold tight skin and fast breathing; blood boiling in his veins and loins twisting in earnest; above all, he’s getting slowly and surely hard.

Surely, it’s his penance for loving his brother in that sick way.

He shifts in the bed to try to move away from Lincoln and is firmly pulled back, held even tighter, closer. He shuts his eyes and reminds himself that Lincoln doesn’t do it on purpose because Lincoln is normal. Lincoln doesn’t crave to stroke his brother’s skin, doesn’t wonder what his kisses would taste like, doesn’t fantasize about what it might be like to bang him, doesn’t need to push out of his mind certain images when he jerks off.

“Fake it ‘til you feel it,” Lincoln grumbles into his ear, “and stop thinking, for God’s sake.”

Michael’s heart leaps in his chest.

“What?”

“Sleep. If you can’t fall asleep, fake it ‘til you feel it. Always works for me.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

Except for the part where he won’t have a second of rest tonight.

It turns out he does rest. Forced into stillness by Lincoln’s embrace, lulled by his soft snoring, soothed by the warm breathing against the nape of his neck, he falls asleep faster and easier than he has in months.

It also turns out that dropping his guard for a few hours was _not_ his smartest idea. Maybe his best, most pleasant, most gratifying idea in, like, forever, but certainly not the smartest one. Because he wakes up to the sun poking him in the eye and Lincoln’s morning boner poking him in the ass. To Lincoln humping his back and pawing his chest. For maybe two seconds, acting on instinct, he pushes back into Lincoln and moves with him. Linc is hard and hot and feeling so good against him, and fuck because Michael is a grownup who cannot come from just someone rutting against his ass, can he?

Not someone. Lincoln.

Shit. And double shit.

He stills, pretends to be asleep and tries to gather his wits. First, luring up the hand that’s drifting lower because if that stupid hand reaches the waistband of his pajamas, there’s only one way this can end, and it won’t be pretty. Second, acting as though he just noticed it — it’s been maybe one minute but it feels like an eternity — and waking up Lincoln. With a well-aimed elbow into his ribs. Third...

Lincoln stirs and grunts behind him, then freezes and quickly moves back. Michael stirs and grunts too, then crawls away sleepily. He doesn’t have to force himself — much — he realizes, ‘cause he’s still somnolent, feeling worse and better than he’s felt in ages.

“Huh, Linc...”

Okay, that’s hypocritical; two-faced; sneaky; devious; dishonest; enter synonymous _ad libitum_. But Michael deserves some compensation of some sort because it’s Lincoln who put them in that situation and it’s Michael who’s going to daydream about it all day and then dream about it all night, all the week, and maybe...

“Sorry, man.”

Linc mumbles about morning wood and men being men, but Michael doesn’t listen. He can’t listen to that gravelly voice for now, not if he wants to keep a semblance of control over his body. And speaking of control and body, does Lincoln need to emphasize how sorry he is by patting Michael’s flank?

“You know what? Stay here, I’m gonna bring you breakfast. Pancakes?”

Apologetic Lincoln is one the best kinds of Lincoln, and sure Michael is feeling guilty, but not enough to not appreciate the offer.

That being said...

He tries not to watch when Lincoln rolls out of the bed and walks to the door, but it’s hard to miss the bulge in his boxer shorts.

He tries not to sniff the faint smell of leather, cigarette smoke and motor oil clinging to the pillows, but it’s hard to avoid it.

He tries not to wallow into the warmth Lincoln has left in the sheets and covers, but it’s hard not to feel it when it blankets him.

Breakfast in bed sounds awesome. But Michael’s going to need to use the shower first.

It often ends with something so not innocuous.

-FIN-

\--Feedback in any way shape or form is always welcome :)


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